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Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Seesaw - ePortfolios for Elementary Setting

There are many great ePortfolio options available, including Evernote or Google, however they can be a bit overwhelming for the students in primary grades. Especially if you want to have them save exemplars.

Seesaw is a free iDevice app that is very simple to use allowing any student capable of using an iPad to take a photo to save an exemplar into their ePortfolio.

Instead of calling them ePortfolio's, Seesaw uses the term journals, both class journals containing works displayed by the entire class and individual journals containing works by any particular student.

The process is quite simple. As a teacher you create your free account which will be tied to your classroom. Set up all your students inside that class.

From there you can add either a photo, video, drawing, or something from the camera roll.

Once you upload an item, like a photo, you can add annotation, voice recording, or text.

Then you select which student is associated with the artifact. You can select multiple students if it is a group project.

The app allows for student access as well. The only rights students have will be to add artifacts. Students do not need an account, just scan a QR code and they are in. While logged in as a student they will have the ability to view any artifact from within the class, not just their own.

Let the students do the work: take the picture, create a drawing, shoot a video, or select a project from the camera roll to insert into their own journal. As a safe guard, before it is finalized into a students journal the teacher must approve the artifact from within their teacher account.

Seesaw allows for you to invite parents so they have ability to see only their child's artifacts.

If you have been looking for an ePortfolio type tool to use with K-3rd grade, this is a perfect fit. Easy to use so students do the work, teacher has full control over anything posted, and parents have access to their child's work. Also a great visual recap come conference time.